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A/N: So, that title requires some explanation.  I'm using the initial system with my new publication schedule to indicate which story a given chapter is in.  Dysland's structure starts with a Book Zero, of which this is Chapter Zero - so, the prologue to the prologue.  The reason for this will become apparent eventually, though possibly not until the whole story finishes.  I will not be taking any further questions at this time.  Hope that helps!

***

“Magic demands focus.  Magic demands concentration.  Magic demands calm.”

Tzi chanted the words softly to herself.  Nothing Master Knauer had taught her actually involved ritual chanting, but he had belabored those points often enough that she could practically hear them in her head when trying to focus, and hearing them in her own voice rather than his shrill, scratchy one was an improvement.  Ironically, she found that they made a serviceable mantra, helping to push away distractions.

“Magic demands focus,” she muttered again, wand outstretched and eyes intent on the book before her.  It was almost pathetically slim, but that wouldn't matter in the long run; she had chosen it for its handsomely embossed leather binding.  For now, it just sat there, inert, atop the marble pedestal she had dragged to the center of her room's floor.  Even the ritual circle she had inscribed in chalk around the plinth lay dull and silent.  To this, she paid no mind, focusing her will at the book, through the wand, from the ineffable sense inside her that was magic—something as natural and effortless as moving a muscle, and still bafflingly complex.  The book would help so much, when it was done...

No, that was the future; her mind needed to be at work on the ritual, not daydreaming of the results.  Focus.

“Magic demands concentration,” Tzi said aloud, her own voice sounding distant to her ears.  The room was nicely dim and private, to minimize external distractions—basic precautions for ritual casting.  Concentrating through her own thoughts was an uphill climb, though.  This was her eighth attempt today; she had started before dinner—and therefore missed dinner—and it was now well after midnight.  Hunger and fatigue impeded concentration, as did the itchy place on her arm where she had cut herself to get the blood the ritual needed enough times now that her healing spell wasn't quite working fully anymore.  Not enough blood lost that it was making her light-headed—true blood magic was prohibited in the strictest terms.  This ritual only called for a couple of drops to bind the finished product to her life force.  Still, what with one thing and another this would have to be her last attempt for the day.  Probably for the week, given how much recovery time she'd need after this.

Which, of course, just added an extra layer of pressure.  No. Focus, concentrate.

The light in the room changed as magic gathered, the glow beginning.  Blue-white from the lines chalked on the floor; motes of gold and scarlet appearing around the book like fireflies as the enchantment took form.  It was pretty and impressive, and the sight alone had caused the distraction which ruined her first attempt.

Streams of glowing fog, wispy at first, began drifting from the books she had set up around the edges of the room.  Tzi had brought in the entirety of what Master Knauer called the “apprentice library,” which was all very basic and very boring stuff covering both magic and the natural sciences.  Boring it might be to read, but her Grimoire would require it.  And once she had the Grimoire, it would be so much easier (and more pleasant) to learn...

Tzi clung to her concentration as the mist thickened into flows of golden light, dancing words and symbols appearing within them, all pouring toward the center of the room and vanishing into the covers of the book upon the pedestal.  It was working!

“Magic demands calm,” she reminded herself, clinging to her own.  Week after tedious week of meditation exercises paid off, and Tzi managed to keep her focus on the magic, on the flow of power and information coursing through her and into the book, letting all the excitement and anticipation and dread and other emotions float on the surface of her mind without disturbing her thoughts.  This was farther than any of her previous attempts had come.  She was so close...

Focus, concentration, calm.

Streams of information slowed to trickles.  Now the golden glow came from the pages, as if the book's cover wrapped a slim block of pure light.  The sparkles hovering in the air around the plinth began to fade, first the crimson ones corresponding to Tzi's blood vanishing into the gold, then the rest drifting closer to settle onto the cover like a thin coating of glittery stardust.

This was all so much flashier than any other magic she'd been allowed to do.

The coating of glitter shifted, drawing itself into the fancy decorative lines and swirls embossed on the book's leather cover like water seeping down a drain.  For a few moments it seemed to pause, making no further progress.  Then finally, there came a sharp snap like a firecracker going off in the room, accompanied by one last, flash of light, bright enough to make Tzi close her eyes in defense.

When she opened them, it was dark again in the room.  No glowing, no tingle of magic, just the thin book in its brown leather binding.  Now, though, it was touched with gold; the edges of its pages shone as if gilded, and gold lines gleamed from the decorative touches on its cover.

It certainly looked like a more expensive book, now, but that was all.  It just lay there.

“Oh, please,” she whispered, edging forward and clenching her hands together as if in prayer.  If this hadn't worked, not only was the whole day wasted but she'd have to scrounge up a fresh book...

Then the lines shifted.  They broke, edged together, re-formed, until the abstract patterns of gold had become a rim of arcane symbols surrounding the edges of the front cover, and in the center, an obvious, if cartoonishly stylized, face.

The lines depicting the eyes shifted, clearly blinking.  The book's cover tilted up slightly, pages ruffling as if in a faint breeze.  Then it rose fully off the pedestal to hover in the air before her, and the face smiled.

“Good evening, master!  What magic shall we do today?”

“EEEEEEEE  YESSSSS!” Tzi squealed, seizing the book in both hands and spinning around in circles, holding it aloft.  “YES YES YES YES!  IT WORKED!”

“I'm very glad to meet you too, master!” her Grimoire said, clearly not bothered by this treatment.

“Oh my god, this is amazing!  Mmmmwah!” Tzi pressed the book to her face, giving it a big smooch, then held it at arm's length, just taking in the sight of it.  Her very own Grimoire. “I'm almost a real wizard now!”

“A person could argue that being able to do magic makes you a wizard,” the Grimoire pointed out, still smiling at her.

“Well, it's a major step, okay?  Wand, Grimoire, familiar, demesne...  I'm halfway there!  I've gotta tell somebody!”

Clutching the enchanted spellbook to her chest, Tzi bolted to the door, barely bothering to open it before skittering out into the hall.

“Master, if I'm not mistaken, it seems to be the middle of the night,” the book remarked, its voice slightly muffled as it was still pressed to her chest.

The halls of Knauer's Tower of Power, in which Tzi had lived for six months before she was willing to believe he seriously called it that and wasn't playing a joke on her, were always drafty, owing to many of them being virtually outdoors.  Some of the outer halls, circling the tower's wide girth, had open colonnades instead of exterior walls, some with balconies, others with nothing but a horrifying drop to the jagged rocks far below.  Tzi raced along one of these toward the other apprentices' rooms, proving the Grimoire's point in the process.  Even the torches had been allowed to flicker out at this hour (she hated that, it made midnight trips to the toilet a nightmare), but they passed wide views of the darkened sky.  It wasn't overcast, for once; moonlight illuminated the stone halls, softening their usually oppressive starkness.

Not that there was much to see.  Knauer, like most wizards, liked his privacy and had set up shop in the most forbidding, blasted landscape he could find.  It had been three years since Tzi had seen a tree outside of illustrations in her study materials.

As usual, she paid no attention to the scenery, such as it was; tonight, she skittered along, too excited even to shiver at gusts of frigid mountain air that tore across her path.  For whatever reason, the apprentices hadn't been given rooms right next to each other, but the others were nearby, and it took her only moments to reach Wesker's chamber.  Which she immediately burst into without knocking.

“WESKER!”

He had been sleeping face-down and now bolted partially upright, which involved an uncomfortable-looking arch of his spine and left him staring at the wall behind his bed.

“Hwatchama?”

“Look!” She held up the book in both hands, extending her arms fully toward him.  “I finished my Grimoire!  And it works!”

“Good evening!” the book said obligingly.

Wesker propped himself on one elbow and turned awkwardly to squint in her general direction, blinking once.  His eyelids were out of sync.  “...gratulars.  Time is it?”

“I dunno, two or three, I guess.  See how perfect it is?” she gushed.  “Look!  It talks and everything!  Aren't you excited for me?!”

“Will be,” he mumbled, flopping back down onto the pillow.  He landed with his face pointed at her, which was the only reason she heard the last bit.  “T'morrow, when it's sun.  Pzzbnng...”

Tzi was already bouncing back out into the hall, leaving his door ajar.  “RHYNNIAN!”

The two senior apprentices, for whatever reason, were roomed closer together, and it was only a short dash to Rhynnian's door, which Tzi in her excitement again flung open with no preamble.  “Rhynnian, look!  I got my Grimoire, it's done!”

Tzi had not been the only one burning the midnight oil; Rhynnian was awake and also in the process of casting a ritual, one which reflected the disparity in their education in its much greater complexity.  Candles hovered around the elaborate circle drawn upon her room's floor, their blue flames casting an eerie glow around the snug apprentice chamber and reducing Rhynnian's pudgy form to a silhouette; even the striking red color of her hair was partially obscured by the peculiar light.

“Oh, oops,” Tzi muttered sheepishly.  Beauty rest was one thing, but no wizard, even an apprentice, lacked respect for magic in progress.  Rhynnian did not acknowledge her entrance, being in the midst of a soft chant even while drawing symbols in the air with her wand.

She started to back carefully out of the room, but paused when a rush of flame from the center of Rhynnian's ritual circle changed the light to a warm gold, accompanied by the end of the chant.  Rhynnian stepped back, pointed her wand at her dresser, and then flicked it in Tzi's direction.

Reflexively, Tzi caught the object that came whizzing at her: a conveniently book-shaped leather pouch attached to a wide strap, the perfect dimensions to hold a slim, brand-new Grimoire.  The senior apprentice's own Grimoire, of course, was much thicker at this point.

Rhynnian half-turned to give Tzi a warm smile, and mouthed “Congratulations!”  Then the light changed again and she had to focus her attention back on her ritual in progress.

Tzi, beaming delightedly, shuffled the rest of the way out and pulled the door very gently shut behind her as Rhynnian's chant resumed.

“Aww, look!” she said out in the hall, holding up the pouch.  “That was nice of her!  We'll have to do something for Rhynnian tomorrow.  I'll take over a share of her chores, how's that sound?”

“A very thoughtful gesture, master,” her Grimoire agreed, tugging gently loose from her grip to float directly into the pouch.  “And look, it's an excellent fit!”

Tzi slung the strap over her shoulder, letting the book pouch rest against her left hip, opposite the side in which she kept her wand thrust into her belt.  In fact, there was an uncomfortable little protrusion there, which she quickly identified as a small clasp designed to be affixed to the belt itself and prevent the pouch from bouncing and slapping against her as she walked.

Having fastened it in place, she turned this way and that, admiring the effect (and admiring the Grimoire, and the pleased expression on its gilt-embossed face), and wishing she had a full-length mirror.  Despite the fatigue rubbing against the backs of her eyes, she was still far too keyed up to sleep.

“I know!” she exclaimed aloud.  “Master Knauer never gets to sleep until almost dawn.  I've gotta show him!”

“Are you sure, master?” the Grimoire asked.  “The wizard in command of such a substantial tower might not appreciate being interrupted this late.  Or, this early.”

“Oh, he never appreciates anything,” Tzi said blithely, already dashing down the hall again toward the stairs.  “Knauer's a crusty old coot, but he's harmless.  And I'm tired of being nothing but grunt labor around here!  I am a serious student of magic, and now I can prove it.  I've gotta see the look on his face!”

“As you wish, master.”

Knauer's Tower was constructed according to what the old man himself called “wizard logic,” which meant whatever his whim happened to be.  As such, in order to reach his lair, she had to go a long way up and then back down.  Knauer himself occupied the top floors, and apprentices were not permitted into most of his chambers except the observatory turret for their astronomy studies, and that only under his direct and irascible supervision.  But the master's upper floors were their own separate block, the only entrance reached by the long, winding stairway which twisted around the outside of the tower and terminated in an intersection near the peak.  From there, Tzi had to go past the locked door to Knauer's private rooms and down another, smaller but equally winding staircase into a kind of basement in which he did his own ritual casting.

The place looked and felt like a basement, despite being on the thirteenth floor; there were no windows, the only illumination came from torches and old candles, and it was constructed of the same heavy stone as the rest of the tower, but notably more rough-hewn.  It was almost as if Knauer had designed the place deliberately to be forbidding and off-putting to possible interlopers.

Not that that had ever stopped Tzi.

Light flickered through the arched door at the base of the stairs; good, the old wizard was still up and working.  Grinning broadly in anticipation, she descended the steps a decidedly unsafe three at a time, skidding when she landed at the bottom without slowing, and whipped around the corner and through the doorway.  At the rate she was moving, Tzi got several more steps into the chamber before she could come to a halt, staring in sudden shock.

Knauer was a scrawny old man, beardless and completely bald, with a permanent hunch and liver spots discoloring his cranium.  Despite all this, he usually managed to look rather dramatic in his sweeping robes, but usually, they weren't black and embroidered in scarlet with symbols that even Tzi knew meant nothing good.  Tonight they were, and that was far from the worst of it.

Around him was scrawled a ritual circle orders of magnitude more complex than anything she had ever seen, and that was just on its first layer; in addition to the intricate symbols and diagrams painted on the floor itself, three additional layers hovered above the ground, slowly rotating and putting off a sullen red glow.  Red because they were, all of them, clearly formed of blood.

Bones stood upright at intervals, seven cobbled-together structures of a provenance Tzi couldn't identify, though each was surmounted by an obviously human skull, atop each of which perched a crimson candle, heavily engraved with more creepy glyphs, and emitting a black flame.

Knauer himself stood in the center, as luck would have it, facing the door.  In his right hand was a large, gleamingly sharp athame; with his left, he was holding an agitated-looking cat by the scruff of its neck.  His Grimoire, a very thick volume bound in handsome black leather with its face and elaborate runes embossed in silver, hovered to one side, open to show the wizard a page.  In that position, its face was aimed at the door as well; its artificial eyes narrowed at her entry.

Master and apprentice stared at each other in mutual astonishment.

“Well,” Knauer said finally, his reedy voice no raspier than usual, “this is awkward.”

“M-master?” Tzi stammered.  “Y-you said blood magic was forbidden...”

“Uh oh,” her brand new Grimoire muttered, and Tzi took an instinctive step backward from the horror show before her.

The door slammed shut of its own accord.  And then, for good measure, iron bars which had not existed before solidified out of thin air across it.  Tzi chanced a look at this over her shoulder, reluctant to take her eyes off the sight of Knauer, who was regarding her in a way she did not like at all.  He'd always been brusque and dismissive with his apprentices, but the look he gave her now was the one he gave particularly thorny problems in his equations.  He turned this look on temporary annoyances put in his way only to be crushed.

“What a nuisance,” Knauer complained irritably.  “I was counting on having the labor of three apprentices to finish...  Drat, I'll need the other two especially, now, so I can't have you telling tales, Smee.  Ah, well, I guess it can't be helped.”

He dropped the cat, which immediately streaked away to the farthest, darkest corner with an offended hiss, and directed an outstretched hand at Tzi.  Tiny flickers of electricity began to arc between his fingers.

She squealed in panic and whipped out her wand to point at him in turn, which would have been a laughable gesture even had her hand not trembled almost to the point of dropping it.  There was absolutely no question of her paltry magical skill standing up to that of a master wizard like Knauer.

“Wait, master,” the old man's Grimoire said suddenly, its voice pitched far deeper than that of her own.  “You can't kill her.”

“Ohthankgod,” Tzi squeaked.

“Who says I can't?” Knauer demanded, turning a glare on his Grimoire, but allowing the gathering energy in his grip to fizzle out.

“This chamber has been prepared for a ritual sacrifice, master,” the Grimoire explained patiently.  “Attuned, specifically, to the amount of life force to be released by a small furry animal.  If a magic-using sapient is slain in here, anything might happen.  Absolutely anything.”

“I don't see the problem here,” Tzi said shrilly, pressing herself back against the bars and groping for the door handle with her free hand.  It turned out there wasn't a handle on this side, which she'd never noticed before.  Not that it would have mattered, with those bars in place.  “I didn't see anything!  Sorry to interrupt whatever I haven't noticed you doing, master, I'll just go back to bed.”

“I suppose,” Knauer said grudgingly to his Grimoire, both of them ignoring her.  “This is a pickle.  Well, guess we'll have to turn her to stone, then.”

Tzi spun, pointed her wand at the bars, and unleashed the only destructive spell she knew, a fireball.  It did nothing, apart from making her jump back from the resulting sparks.

“That could work,” the master's Grimoire replied behind her, “but transfiguration is dangerously close to the purpose of this ritual, master.  To do it safely, we would have to completely scrub all these preparations, transfigure the girl, and then start over from scratch.”

“Bugger,”the old wizard said feelingly, while Tzi jammed her wand back into her belt and began tugging fruitlessly at the bars with her bare hands.  “Slow time?”

“That's safe enough with regard to the active ritual, though temporal magic will interact unpredictably with the portal spells we have established to contact Dysland.  Hmm...now that I mention it...”

Knauer's cackling was a horror upon the ears.  “Hah!  Perfect.  The portal!”

“Indeed, master, the portal should serve nicely.”

Very slowly, Tzi turned to stare at him over her shoulder.  “Th-the portal?”

Knauer grinned, displaying a jagged mouthful of broken, brown teeth, and pointed the athame at her like a wand.  “The portal.  Goodbye, Smee.”

She didn't even see him cast.  The world simply dissolved in blinding light, and the bottom dropped out of existence.  Tzi felt as if she were being dissolved and poured down a drain, or stretched like taffy, or re-assembled like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle without being taken apart first.  Just trying to make sense of the experience forced her brain into contortions it wasn't meant to handle—as if it didn't have enough problems, what with being dissolved, poured, stretched and re-kajiggered.

Then Tzi felt as if she were slammed into a stone wall at roughly the speed of light, after which it was quite a relief that she blacked out.